


Warmth in Springtime

by the_elegant_hedgehog



Category: Mary Poppins - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, First Heartbreak, First Love, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_elegant_hedgehog/pseuds/the_elegant_hedgehog
Summary: It’s just the nature of things that for every family Mary Poppins visits, there will also be a cute low-class worker waiting outside the house or in the park, ready to accompany her and the children on their adventures.(Or: Mary Poppins doesn't expect to fall in love, but she does anyways. It's too bad it can't work.)





	Warmth in Springtime

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Mary Poppins or Mary Poppins Returns, but I do own all mistakes in this fic. I only saw the movie once so I wrote this armed only with my terrible short term memory and the wikipedia plot summary.
> 
> There are two references to other works from the various actors of the Mary Poppins Returns cast. Try to spot them!

Mary Poppins knows that she has a type.

It’s just the nature of things that for every family she visits, there will also be a cute low-class worker waiting outside the house or in the park, ready to accompany her and the children on their adventures.

Seeing Jack that first day in the park isn’t a surprise. It’s not even a surprise that Jack knows of her- she’s always had a special relationship with the workers of London. Jack has a smile that brightens dreary London better than those gas lamps he lights. It’s the same smile she saw in Bert and Charlie and Jacob and a thousand other men.

The smile shouldn’t be important, but every time she sees it, Mary Poppins finds herself secretly smiling to herself anyways.

Being practically perfect in every way means that she can’t lie to herself, so she doesn’t bother pretending she’s just pleased to have such a special and willing partner in her Banks related plans. Jack is special in a way that very few people are after as long of a life as she’s had. 

She’s not sure quite why he has such an effect on her. He sings and dances and laughs just as well as every other male companions she’s had over the years, but something about him just seems, well, magical, for lack of a better term. 

At first she thinks it’s just because he reminds her so much of Bert, but while she was especially fond of the chimney sweep, she never felt quite like this. Every time Jack smiles at her, her heart grows warm and only her acute sense of decorum keeps the red from her cheeks. The warmth doesn’t seem to fade either, it just grows with each smile, each subtle glance, each too-casual brush of the hand.

She’s so flustered by this strange warm growth that she completely forgets that it’s the second Wednesday of the month when they go to visit her cousin Topsy. Between her cousin’s revelation about her so-called curse and ducking out the door, Mary Poppins delicately pulls her aside and asks if Topsy could also fix the warmth in her chest as it has clearly started to affect her brain. 

Topsy steps back and looks at her from head to toe through her various spectacles. She spins Mary Poppins around three times, both ways, and then frowns for a long moment. 

“You are still practically perfect in every way, Cousin Mary.” She says, still frowning. Topsy had never understood the British idea of a stiff upper lip, so it is easy for Mary Poppins to see the sadness in her eyes. “There’s nothing for me to fix, Mary. You’re just growing in love.”

Mary Poppins blinks at her. “Don’t be foolish, Cousin Topsy, I’m not falling in love with anyone.”

“I said growing, ‘growing in love’.” Topsy laughs brightly, “You are much too proper to fall into anything, Cousin Mary. No, that warmth is love growing in your chest. And love-” she pauses, sad once again, “Love is the only thing I cannot fix, even on days that aren’t the second Wednesday of every month.”

Unlike her cousin, Mary Poppins does understand the British idea of a stiff upper lip, so she purses her lips, nods curtly, thanks her cousin, and leaves. She tries to ignore the warmth, but then it pulses brightly at the idea that she’ll need Jack’s assistance to get back on the bike ladder contraption. 

She thinks that the love growing inside of her could just be proof that Jack is a little magic, in the way that some humans are. Maybe the warmth is proof that she won’t spend the rest of her long life time taking care of other people’s children. The warmth grows so warm and bright, Mary Poppins is surprised she’s not literally walking on air, held aloft by a million butterflies. She lets anticipation hurry her steps out of her cousin’s shop and after Jack and the children.

But then she sees Jack spot Jane Banks and the warmth growing in her chest turns to ice. There is a sudden, unfamiliar sting of tears prickling at her eyes and time suddenly, kindly stops for her, to give her a moment to compose herself.

The tears drip down her checks. Even in the quiet stillness of the frozen world, she is too dignified to allow herself a proper sob. Instead, she gives herself a few minutes of silent tears and contemplation, before erasing all traces of her sudden heartbreak and nodding a small, thankful smile at the sky.

Time starts up again and no one is the wiser except Mary. She tells Jack to take Jane to her rally, and tries to focus on the smallest Banks children. The warmth is still bitter cold, and she understands now that Jack isn’t just magic in a way some humans sometimes are but usually aren’t. He’s also in love with someone else.

Mary Poppins pulls herself together and makes a deal with herself: she’ll see all the Banks children through to the end of their time together and then she’ll take a nice holiday somewhere far away from London and very far away from any lamplighters.

She knows that some of her other cousins can trap men to themselves. It just takes the right words and a kiss, and Mary Poppins knows the words even as she knows she’ll never be able to use them. She still can’t lie to herself, so she doesn’t pretend she isn’t tempted. It’s the idea that binding Jack to her might also bind the part of him that makes him magic that turns the idea sour in her mind. 

Her warmth is still so cold that the rest of her feels numb from the prolonged contact. Every time Jack smiles at her, there’s a moment where the warmth blooms again before turning back to icy coldness as she remembers that same smile directed at Jane. 

Mary Poppins tells herself that even if he just loved her- and her alone- that they still would not have a future. She might be growing in love, but she’s still Mary Poppins. She will live far beyond Jack’s lifetime, even if he is bound to her will and magic. 

It doesn’t stop the sharp sting of heart break or the steady ache of her despair. 

She keeps the promise she made to herself. She sees the Banks children through to the end of the week. She helps them turn back time and makes sure the kite lands on Wilkens the Younger’s desk, the naughty boy. She even makes sure Wilkens the Elder still has the rest of his wits about him, and makes sure he’s in the room next door listening. 

She’s thought about everything except her part in turning back time. She moves the clock hands before ducking into the tower with Jack in order to help him relight the gas lights and to return him to the rest of the lamplighters on the roof far down below.

“You didn’t have to risk your life like that, you know,” she tells him, “I could have turned back time alone.”

“Sure,” he says, and even though she refuses to look at him, Mary can tell he’s grinning as he says it, “but it’s better when you have people to help you.” He’s right of course, but Mary can’t tell him that, so she continues working in silence.

Time is up to its strange tricks again, and seconds are turning into minutes around them. They only have a few moments to get over to the bank and help save the children, but those moments clearly are going to last as long as they need them to. 

“I just want you to know, Mary Poppins, that I’m ever so glad to have met you.”

“You act as if I’m leaving.”

“Aren’t you?”

She pauses, thinks of lying. Instead the truth comes out. “Yes.”

“Were you going to say goodbye?”

“I tend to not make a habit of saying goodbye to the children I look after. It tends to make things so much messier than they need to be.”

There’s a gentle hand on her arm and she finds herself turning to face him. “No, I mean, were you going to say goodbye to me?”

“We really should be going, there isn’t much time.”

“I reckon we’ve got all the time we need, Mary Poppins. Were you going to say goodbye to me.”

Mary Poppins thinks of binding words and the warmth seeping into her chest through the hand on her arm. She thinks of an eternity of leerie speak and of how a cover’s not a book and of little boys listening to stories of magic and of the same little boys looking up at a window and waving to the girl behind it.

She thinks of how even as he was learning the name Mary Poppins, his heart already belonged to her young charge Jane. She thinks of moments stretching out before them like taffy and of standing upside down and of silent, salty tears. 

She thinks of a boy who believed in magic so hard, he grew into a man made of it in a way no other human had ever been. She thinks of a woman who was made of magic and was practically perfect, but wanted nothing more than to be a messy, complicated, ordinary human who could live a messy, complicated, ordinary life.

She thinks and she thinks and she thinks until she can think no more, until all there is left is a smile brighter than all the lights in London.

“I’ve been growing in love with you.” She tells him. “And I cannot be in love with you. It goes against my very nature. I will spend the rest of my considerable lifetime taking care of other people’s children and other people’s relationships, and I will never have the time for my own. I will outlive you, and no amount of love in the world will fix any of this.” She pauses, gasps for breath, feeling as though she has forgotten how to breathe. “I’m growing in love with you, Jack, but you’ve already grown in love with someone else too.”

It’s a testament to his belief that Jack understands her perfectly. He pulls her to him, his arms wrapped around her as she finally sobs into his chest. “I grew in love with you too. I lived for any scrap of news about the magical Mary Poppins. I knew when you were in India, and the Caribbean, and in America. I knew about the Jeffreys and the Boylestons and the Carters. I knew about little Sofia Prince and Daniel McGrabe. If anyone heard of a woman descending from the sky to take care of a family for a while before disappearing back into a cloud, they knew to come tell me about it.”

He unwraps his arms from her and steps back just enough to look into her face. “I didn’t just grow in love, Mary. I lived in love for you if that makes any sense.”

She sniffs, and all the tears rolled back up her face and into her eyes. She returns his smile to him- wide and bright and happy- stretched across her face. “It makes as much sense as anything does, Jack the Magic Leerie.”

She rocks onto her tiptoes, decorum forgotten for just a moment, and presses her lips to his.

It feels like coming home and gentle magics and the smell of warm bread fresh from the oven. It feels like happy smiles across the room and warm springtime light melting away the frostburn of winter. 

For that split second, the moment stretching out like eternity before them, they both share Jack’s smile. But then, as always, time catches up to them and decorum settles back in and good sense returns.

He grins down at her, happy beyond belief, bursting full of jubilation and magic. She smiles back, gently and just a little sadly. “You should forget this Jack.” She says. She won’t bind him to her, through magic or kisses. “You should forget me.”

He looks heartbroken, the smile slides of his face to shatter on the floor. She leans up and kisses his cheek. She seals the memory away behind thoughts of blue London sky and a pack of leeries and Jane’s outline in a window. Let his love of her hide behind his other great loves, she thinks, let it grow into something else.

They have more than enough time to save the day for the Banks children, so they do. Mary Poppins arranges everything for the next day. It’s not hard for her to contact her friend Rosalind Price and ask her to bring her balloon cart to the May Day fair. It’s even less difficult to hide Jane’s balloon in the back of the bundle until Jack comes along. 

He just needs a bit of a nudge in the right direction. They will make wonderful parents. She’s Mary Poppins, she just knows these things. Their children won’t ever need her.

She can feel the door getting ready to open soon, so she stops to talk with Rosalind instead of flying with the Banks children.

“Hello Rosalind.” She says. 

“Hello Mary Poppins.” The old woman smiles. “You haven’t aged a day, have you.”

She smiles, but her heart isn’t in it. “Why thank you.”

“You should join them, pick out your balloon.”

“In a bit maybe.” There’s a lengthy pause. The Price women have never been the most normal folk, so Rosalind doesn’t even bother to try to fill the silence. “How’s darling Eglantine?”

“Oh she’s fine. Moved out to Pepperinge Eye.”

“Does she also have your family’s,” Mary pauses, gestured with her hand at the Londoners floating above them, “gift?”

“Naturally, but she refuses to notice it.”

At an impasse, Mary lapses into silence.

Rosalind gestures at the cart. “Go, find your balloon.”

Mary Poppins does as told, selecting a bright red one from the center of the bunch. It doesn’t drop to the ground, but it doesn’t pull her into the air either. 

“Oh dear,” Rosalind clucks her tongue, “you have a heavy heart right now, Mary Poppins.”

“Yes, I suppose.” There’s no point in not telling Rosalind the full truth, so she does. “I grew in love with a boy who grew in love with both me and someone else.”

“I didn’t know your kind could even do that.” Rosalind says, not unkindly. “What did you do about it?”

Mary Poppins laughs weakly, and gestures up at Jane and Jack, dancing above London together. “I let him go and gave him to her.”

Rosalind looks at her assessingly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Mary Poppins. A heart’s a heavy burden, especially when it’s been broken.” She stood slowly, ancient joints cracking as she walked over to the younger-looking woman. “I don’t know of anything that can fix a broken heart.”

“I heard time can help, yes?” Mary Poppins can’t bring herself to look at her old friend, can’t face the lie in the old woman’s face as she hums in agreement.

Mary leans over and hugs Rosalind, and for a moment, Mrs. Price is as she once was- young and beautiful and strong. The moment passes as Mary Poppins steps back, though she ensures the pain does not return to Rosalind’s knees. 

“Well, I had better be off then.”

“No goodbye?”

Mary thinks of a question asked in a clocktower, and the kiss that was given in answer. She hears a door opening in the far distance.

“I’ve already said the most important one. Goodbye Rosalind. Give Eglantine my love for me.” She picks up her bag from the ground where it had appeared, opens her umbrella above her head, and begins to float up. “And don’t worry- you’ll be a grandmother within the decade!”

She clears the trees quickly, and it’s not difficult to find 17 Cherry Lane. She sees Annabel, John, and little Georgie running through the empty house. She sees Ellen cursing as she bustles around the equally empty kitchen. She sees Michael and Jane, all grown up, arms around each other’s waists as they cross the doorway into their childhood home.

And she sees Jack. She sees him smile up at her and wave his arms wildly at her. It’s such a ridiculous display that she can’t help but smile back and lift her umbrella in a mock salute. 

“I’ll never forget you, Mary Poppins!” He yells. It’s the nature of his magic that she hears what he says next, though his mouth never moves. “I haven’t forgotten and I never will!”

A flicker of warmth blooms in her breast. Feeling like a young school girl that she doesn’t remember being, she blows a kiss with the hand holding her bag. She’s only practically perfect, not perfectly perfect, she can afford a moment of childlike fun.

Time stops for her- one third, final time. She memorizes the smile on Jack’s face, and the way his hair doesn’t quite behave. She looks into his heart and sees two balloons, one red and one pink. She sees two separate kisses, each given by a different woman, both holding a special place in his memories. Mary takes a moment to memorize each detail, because she will never see magical, lovely, leerie Jack again.

Time restarts and moves onwards, Mary Poppins along with it.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed Mary Poppins Returns, but the sweet smiles Mary Poppins kept sending to Jack broke my heart because you just knew that in the end she'd leave. I liked the idea of her not really experiencing romantic love before and being somewhat confused/perturbed by the whole thing.


End file.
